2005-11-12

The alarm went off at 8 o’clock and Eriko and I got out of bed. She was worried about whether she would feel good enough to go to her drum class, but neither of us mentioned it and we just ate breakfast. She seemed to feel fine and at 9 we headed off (in the Jetta). I dropped her off in class (we were the first to arrive) and talked to her instructor a bit. Then I headed off to Starbucks to get a mocha and Big Foot car wash to vacuum the car. That went well and it was a big improvement. In the process, I discovered that Gene had left us a stereo and there was a repair book as well. Upon returning to North Seattle Community College, I spent some time looking around the car and cleaning up here and there. I felt very grateful to have been given this vehicle. I watched a colloquia lecture while waiting for Eriko to finish. When her class was over, we headed down to Ballard (with Eriko driving) so we could finish the vehicle registration. Unfortunately, the lady told us that we needed an emissions test, and the place was up north (a few blocks from where we had been). We only had about 40 minutes to get back, so I took over the driving and we hurried. We made it, the Jetta passed emissions, and we drove back south. We made a detour at McDonald’s and enjoyed a yummy meal. It has certainly been a while for me and this McD’s was much cleaner than others I remember. The registration went off without a hitch and now we are the proud owners of a 1994 Jetta. We came back home and Eriko took a nap and called her mom. I finished watching the lecture, which was on eliminating memory latency by allowing out-of-order loads/stores with the possibility for rollback (in the event of a conflict). It was pretty cool. Then we headed to Costco, where Eriko got herself a new winter coat and I purchased an LCD monitor for the computer. I had been struggling with paying the big bucks for a laptop (with a small screen), whereas this big monitor allows us to keep our eyes happy and my wallet thick. We ate some Costco pizza before leaving – the first bite tasted so much better than the last. We waited around @ home for a bit before heading off to Scott & Judy’s for game night. (I didn’t actually think we would go, since we left about an hour later than it started). There were four other couples there, all with asian women (one korean, two japanese-american, and a hong kong chinese) and caucasian men. We sat out the first game, which was American pop-culture heavy and enjoyed the next two – pictionary and cranium. Eriko impressed everyone with her drawing skills, especially when she had to draw “counting sheep” with her eyes closed. We had a good time and ate lots of food, finally heading for about 2 AM.